The shadow of trust: The methodological choices of a case study on leader communication

Abstract

The purpose of the current paper is to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the methodological qualitative multi-data single case study approach to trust research. This paper aims to describe how to study the meaning of leader communication trust building in crisis organization through combination of chosen methods. The case, organizations of higher education with diminishing public funding, touches a big part of the scientific community. The current research strategy leans theoretically to Eisenhardt (1989; Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007) single case study strategy focusing on the revelation of the unusual phenomenon under extreme circumstances. This qualitative case study consists of three primary data with complementary data all representing the case phenomenon. First, the primary data were collected for this inductive study at the target organization faculty meetings where the president and CEO gave yearly speeches about the financial situation of the organization. Speeches were recorded and observed, recordings and field notes then were transcribed for analysis. Second, followers were asked to write their perceptions and feelings into texts after the speeches. Third, the data consists of shadowing the president working with the management team focusing on both communication and aesthetics of trust building. Target organization's yearly job satisfaction survey was used as a complementary data. The analysis was conducted by using the methods of critical discourse analysis, typology leading to metaphor and writing ethnographic vignettes. Preliminary findings of the current study suggest that the followed combination of methods is novel in the field of trust research, especially it seems that the method of shadowing is widely unused to study trust. Shadowing allowed to view leader trust building through both verbal communication and from aesthetic, non-verbal, perspective. Thus, this study contributes to trust and communication research methodologically by fresh empirical evidence from a less studied public organization of higher education.